Location Privacy for Users of Wireless Devices through Cloaking

The continued growth in online services that provide users with content based on location presents a unique privacy concern for the user. Since the user cannot control the use of the data included in his network transactions once they leave the device, nor can he control the response from the location-based system (LBS), he must assume that information is available to an unknown observer who could use the information to estimate the user´s location. This paper presents a cloaking system that preserves a user´s location privacy by submitting multiple requests from disparate false locations to the LBS in rapid succession in order to confuse the observer and meet the user´s pre-determined location privacy threshold.